AI Archives - The Next Billion Seconds

mpesceMarch 21, 2025March 20, 2025

Should we give up copyright to beat China in the race for AI?

In conversation with Radio New Zealand’s Nine To Noon host Kathryn Ryan: Christie’s held its first auction of AI-generated art, earning a million dollars. Those AI artworks had been ‘trained’ from countless images, owned by other people. Is that legal? OpenAI and Google claim that unless they have free right to use – well, basically everything everywhere ever created by humanity – to train their AI models, the Chinese will win the AI race. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s A-listers called for protection of artists and their works against what they see as copyright theft. Plus: A Clockwork Orange comes to life for prisoners in solitary confinement – and is your chatbot flattering you?

mpesceOctober 31, 2024October 31, 2024

Series 2024 – Halloween Special: Ghosts in the Machine

Google’s new NotebookLM digests documents to create AI summaries, and provides an incredible new way to search a vast set of information. One little throwaway feature became a viral hit – “Audio Overview”, which creates a ‘podcast’ featuring two clever, chipper – and entirely synthetic – personas, engaging in a ‘deep dive’ on the content within NotebookLM. In the spirit of Halloween, we uploaded the scripts for the first four episodes of Series 2024 – and NotebookLM rose to the occasion. Is this the future of podcasting? And — HAVE I JUST BEEN PUT OUT OF A JOB?

mpesceOctober 24, 2024October 21, 2024

Series 2024 – Episode 4: AI UNEMPLOYED?

I had a great gig writing for COSMOS Magazine – until I was replaced by an AI. I never even knew – until months later. Here’s the whole story how I became ‘AI unemployed’ – and what happened next.

mpesceDecember 15, 2023December 15, 2023

AI Miniseries SPECIAL EPISODE “Superpowers School Podcast with host Paddy Dhanda”

I really enjoy being a guest on other folks’ podcasts – all of the fun, almost none of the work. To help publicise my new book Getting Started with ChatGTP and AI Chatbots, I hopped onto Paddy Dhanda’s Superpowers School podcast for a 45 minute chat about AI chatbots, using AI safely & wisely – and what’s coming. It’s great fun, so have a listen!

If you’d like a signed copy of my book, just follow this link!

mpesceDecember 6, 2023December 4, 2023

AI Miniseries #2 – “The Gunpowder Plot – How Meta put an AI chatbot on your smartphone and changed the game”

While everyone was going gaga over ChatGPT, Meta – the former Facebook – rewrote the AI playbook with LLaMA. Small enough to run on a smartphone, LLaMA gives us a glimpse of what the world will look like at the end of next year – with AI chatbots everywhere, inside almost everything. LLaMA and its tiny kin are amazing – but are they safe?

mpesceNovember 29, 2023November 27, 2023No comment

AI Miniseries #1 – “When It Changed – How ChatGPT became the fastest growing app ever”

On 30 November 2022 startup OpenAI released ChatGPT, resetting expectations for artificial intelligence. Only one year later and billions now have access to ‘good enough’ AI, resetting our expectations for what computers can do – and leaving us wondering how we’ll adapt to this latest breakthrough.

On this first of a three-part miniseries, we explore how ChatGPT rose to become the fastest growing app in history, then found itself the weapon of choice in the longest running war in the technology industry – the feud between Microsoft and Google.

mpesceSeptember 8, 2022August 31, 2022

6.18 TNBS Briefing: Fool Me Once

A clever bit of AI software transforms my voice into a silky-smooth ‘Lisa’ – almost an archetypal radio host. In the near future we’ll be able to make ourselves sound – and look – like anyone else. How will we know if we’re being fooled?

Big thanks to Twitter user @nearcyan – who offered me a demo of https://koe.ai – have a play with it yourself!

mpesceAugust 25, 2022August 24, 2022

Episode 6.16 How to be a Futurist

Three big transformations – one that’s has already happened (the Web), one happening now (augmented reality), and one about to happen – illuminate the path (and pitfalls) for those anyone who wants to articulate the future. Listen, and learn how to be your own futurist!

Big thanks to the folks at Quantium for allowing me to share this in-house talk I gave to staffers in August 2022.

mpesceAugust 4, 2022August 3, 2022

Episode 6.15 Palmer Luckey Goes to War

At the age of 19, Palmer Luckey founded Oculus, bringing a comatose VR industry back to life. Will he to do the same for defense with his new startup, Anduril – and has he solved Australia’s submarine problem? A wide-ranging interview covering everything from the search for the ‘ultimate’ gaming display to the future of warfare.

“Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy” is Anduril’s own statement about what they’re about.

And an article about the XL-AUV project Anduril is doing with the ADF.

Palmer Luckey is speaking in Sydney on the 18th of August, 2022 – book your tickets here.

mpesceMay 4, 2022May 4, 2022

Episode 6.04 Briefing: What happens when good AI turns to the dark side?

A recent experiment showed that any AI can be ‘turned to the dark side’ simply by reframing its goals. It’s surprisingly easy – and that points to a big problem.

If you’d like to read the paper – published in Nature – click here.